When Hacienda Napoles was confiscated in the early 1990s, Escobar's menagerie was dispersed to zoos around the country. But not the hippos. For about two decades, they have wallowed in their soupy lake...

Here, conditions for hippos are idyllic. The river is slow moving and has plenty of shallows, perfect for larger animals which don't actually swim but push themselves off banks, gliding through the water. Moreover, the region never experiences drought, which tends to act as a natural brake on the size of herds in Africa....

Colombian people, [one veterinarian] believes, are more vulnerable than Africans because they see hippos as cuddly, "floppy" animals...

"My father brought a little one home once," an unnamed girl told the paper. "I called him Luna (Moon) because he was very sweet - we fed him with just milk."...

Of course, hippos are deadly. They kill more human beings than any other wild mammal.

But there are 5 animals that kill more people. Try to name them in order, then look here. I thought the "wild" in the phrase "wild mammal" was a clue that dogs killed more people, but domestic dogs are 10th on the linked list.

"2. Mosquitoes – The annoying buzz in the ear is the least of our concerns with mosquitos. They’re very deadly due to carrying diseases such as Malaria. As many as 1,000,000 people per year die from Malaria. So what could possibly kill more people than that?"

Change this to prog environmentalists. It's their bans that don't allow DDT, and allow brown people to die. Why do environmentalists hate brown people?

" As many as 1,000,000 people per year die from Malaria. So what could possibly kill more people than that?""

Rachel Carson tops that list. Her DDT ban kills a half million a year. Her theory that DDT causes bird eggs not to hatch has been disproven.

There used to be a wild animal park in Orange County called Lion Country Safari . It close years ago in part because, during a very rainy winter, the park flooded and a hippo named "Bubbles" escaped. The hippo submerged in a small lake in Laguna Canyon. After several weeks of trying to trap her, she was shot with a tranquilizer dart and died of suffocation. The negative publicity helped to close the park.

While it was open, I had several cases in which visitors were mauled by lions.

"3. Tsetse Flies – Now we’re getting into some serious mass murdering animals (insects). The Tsetse fly is what spread the African sleeping sickness, which affects as many as 500,000 people, 80 percent of whom eventually die."

I got $10 that says 100% eventually die (that 20% not killed by sleeping sickness--and I don't have sleeping sickness).

I can't understand how tree huggers would object to eradicating an invasive species. The article is correct, there would be a lot of bad press involved with shooting all the hippos, but come on! They shouldn't be there; who knows what precious native, algae or plant they hippos are driving to extinction ---- Oh, there's the way to get rid of the hippos. Find something else more "green" it's eliminating...

Magson: "My guess before seeing the list was that #1 would be mosquitoes"

And you would be right. Stats are notoriously difficult to compile, but according to the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development reports (per Wikipedid), worldwide homicide rates run somewhat less than 500,000 a year.

If we're looking at the total number of man on man/mammal on mammal deaths from the dawn of time, I suspect that disease carrying, poison bearing bugs would still win the competition handily. New worldwide estimates for the Black Death, alone, start at a low of 75 million and range upward from there (also, per Wikipedia).

t is at least arguable that human beings are wild; never having been domesticated by another species.

Most humans are domesticated by the culture they live in. There are some asocial, feral humans who kill despite the norms of the society they live in. My guess is there have been more killings in organized wars in which the people doing the killing serve the society they live in.

Ironrailsironweights, The woman said, 'What was that?' in reaction to the hippo's episode, ha. More amusing than David C. in his eight minutes, St George, but I guess Cronenberg wasn't aiming at humor.

Funny that the listicle speculates that most deaths by tiger attack were provoked by humans. Liberal victim-blaming...they shouldn't have crossed paths with the tiger in the jungle.

I've read that most tiger attacks in India, which accounts for almost all human deaths from tigers, occur when people squat down outdoors to relieve themselves. Tigers do not attack standing humans because the humans' body orientation does not match any of a tiger's normal prey animals. Tigers perceive squatting humans as prey, as their body positions are more similar to other prey animals.

That may be (what - no pay toilets in the jungle?). But to say that the unfortunate people who meet their end by tiger attack probably have it coming is a profoundly ugly thing. I would also submit that it is a profoundly leftist way to look at it.

30+k Americans die in traffic fatalities/year. The WHO estimate is 1,240,000 traffic fatalities/year for the world. Since those essentially all are the result of human error, the number for humans looks pretty good to me.

"ironrailsironweights said...I've read that most tiger attacks in India, which accounts for almost all human deaths from tigers, occur when people squat down outdoors to relieve themselves. Tigers do not attack standing humans because the humans' body orientation does not match any of a tiger's normal prey animals. Tigers perceive squatting humans as prey, as their body positions are more similar to other prey animals.

In the early 20th Century Fredrick Russell Burnham proposed introducing Hippos to Louisana swamps to alleviate a meat shortage in the USA. Burnham was Baden-Powell inspiration for Scouting. There is a book about it American Hippopotamus.